It had not looked below.
The cataclysmic power turned inward. Even as tongues of flame licked out, the inexorable progress slowed by men’s efforts but never halted, the Dragon itself cast a curious eye upon the London Stone. That unassuming limestone block held something different, something more, that the beast had not noticed when it took Cannon Street into its maw.
Lune’s rigid body jerked. She strove desperately to conceal herself somehow, and with her, the Onyx Hall. It could not be done. A probing tendril of awareness snaked down through the Stone, and found her in its path.
Curiosity became avarice, and all-consuming hunger.
Here was a prize more glorious than the one Father Thames had barred, a mirror to the realm already under the Fire’s claws. Here was a place of power. If the pitch and oil of London’s wharves had given birth to the Dragon, the enchantments of the Onyx Hall could make of it a god, against which all the efforts of mere humans would be as nothing.
In a molten voice that boiled all the blood in Lune’s veins, the Fire snarled, This will be mine.
Its claws flexed within her gut, and it began to pull.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: one o’clock in the afternoon
Irrith hesitated outside the Fish Street arch for several minutes before forcing herself through. Familiarity did not make the Cailleach’s icy touch any easier to bear; she dreaded it more with every encounter. Perhaps some of the London fae helping Jack Ellin were there because they loved their City; all Irrith cared about was escape.
But that wasn’t true. She gave it the lie the moment she passed through the blackness of the arch, as she did every time she bore a message between the Queen and the Prince, every time she turned her thoughts and efforts to battling the Fire instead of fleeing back home to Berkshire. She dared not examine her reasons too closely, for fear they would dissolve into senseless panic, but they propelled her onward nonetheless.
Still, she gasped in horror as the Hag’s cold breath penetrated her flesh. All the vital spark of her immortal life dimmed, becoming something fragile and vulnerable. She thought of the disaster above: collapsing houses, choking smoke, stampeding mortals running like rats to save their tiny lives. A thousand and one ways to die. Fast or slow, in pain or in black unconsciousness, it didn’t matter; in the end, she would be snuffed out, as easily as a candle.
Irrith tasted blood. She had stifled her scream with a fist, and bit down so hard she broke the skin. Spitting, she made herself straighten from her instinctive crouch. The fae above—more than six of them, now; others had come to join the fight, or at least to escape the wind—needed instruction from the Queen. Angrisla was frighting people from their houses, when they would stay past the point of safety; Tom Toggin was shepherding children separated from their parents; they were all helping in their own ways. But it was like carrying water in a sieve: the few drops that shifted made scant difference against the whole.
The sprite put her head down and drove herself onward. Much of the Onyx Hall was still a maze to her, a labyrinth full of dark secrets, but she knew the major ways well enough to keep her path without having to look. Arriving in the council chamber, however, she found it echoing and empty, holding only the pierced arc of Amadea’s fan. Irrith stared dully at the makeshift map, trying not to imagine her own body pierced by a blade; there were roving bands of women in the streets above, some of them armed, seeking out anyone who wore strange dress or spoke English badly. Foreigners had been attacked all over. A few were in prison now. Others were dead.
Death came so easily, with so little warning.
Breath ragged in her chest, Irrith dug her broken nails into her scalp. “Stop it,” she whispered, teeth grating until her jaw ached. “Find the Queen.”
Not only could she not find Lune; she could not find anyone. The Onyx Hall might have been an unpopulated grave. Had they all fled, without telling her? Fury at that thought gave Irrith a little defense against the cold—so long as she did not think of dying here, alone. She tried the Queen’s bedchamber, without luck, and the night garden. All the flowers there had shivered into black, brittle stalks, and dead leaves carpeted the ground. It was the one place that had felt like home to Irrith, and she ran from it, weeping.
Her shoulder slammed into a wall, checking her flight. She was near the greater presence chamber now, and still no sight of anyone. But she heard a strangled cry.
Irrith’s heart leapt. Company, any company, would be a blessing, a minute consolation that all the world had not perished. Shivering, she ducked through the great doors.
The chamber was empty, and its black heights gave no solace. The crystal panes stretching between the arches of the ceiling gleamed opaque with ice. Frost coated the silver throne at the far end, and so it took a moment for Irrith to realize the great chair had been shifted askew.
She crossed the patterned floor on feet gone numb, now dreading what she might find. The sounds coming from behind the throne hurt just to hear. She had to look, though; she had to know.
Curling her fingers around the freezing metal, Irrith peeked into the space beyond.
Hope surged at the sight of Lune. Why the Queen was here, hidden behind her throne, standing on some kind of platform with one hand on a pitted block of limestone, Irrith couldn’t begin to guess, but at least she was here. Not everyone was gone.
Then she felt the heat flooding the alcove.
There was no comfort in it. Earlier that morning, Irrith had found herself caught between two horns of the Fire, trapped between a pair of burning houses, the hot air searing her lungs. This was worse. This destruction had awareness.
Another broken groan escaped Lune, and her fingers whitened on the stone. Her silver hair hung lank about her face, all the curls blasted out, and her head sagged as if she could not keep it up. Something fell from behind that curtain, sizzling where it struck the wooden planks, leaving a scorch mark on their surface.
She was weeping tears of fire.
A new sound reached Irrith’s ears: a high-pitched moan, a wordless cry of terror. Only when Lune twitched did the sprite realize it came from her own throat. The Queen’s other hand jerked upward, searching blindly; she knew someone else was there. Irrith almost reached for her, then held herself back. The power suffusing Lune would destroy anyone who touched her.
“What can I do?” she whimpered, fighting not to flee.
The reply came out in a parched whisper, torn from the depths of Lune’s body.
“Find. Jack.”
LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: two o’clock in the afternoon
His own coughing woke him. Ash coated Jack’s mouth and throat; he hacked, body convulsing, to expel it and draw clean air.
But clean air was nowhere to be found. More ash and smoke came in with every breath, and desiccating heat seared his lungs. The dirt beneath him was baked dry, cobbles like a griddle on which he roasted. Jack heaved himself upward, but made it only halfway before his elbows and knees gave out, dropping him once more. The effort advanced him a foot or two, though, and so he kept trying, lurching by this crippled means away from the danger that threatened him.
For he had woken in a narrow alley between two houses, both of them alight. When Jack made it to the dubious safety of the street, he found that much of Lombard was in flames, its defenders fled. The signs marking the houses of the wealthy burnt like witches on their pyres: the Golden Fleece, the Fox, the White Hart. Jack might have been in a painting of Judgment Day, showing the fate of worldly riches.